


You Just Turned So White (never needed you so bad)

by chasingyourghost



Category: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Genre: Area 4 Festival, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingyourghost/pseuds/chasingyourghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing left to disguise.  You never wanted it so bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You just turned so white

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ this ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N55EhrH52Uo) heart-wrenching performance in 2010. Title taken from the lyrics of War Machine.

He plays violently, feverishly.  Throwing his whole body into his chords, trying to throw his soul in, too.  Trying to pull it out of the shredder, or maybe to force it the rest of the way through.  To the other side.

Michael's been dead for three days. 

It's his thirty-second birthday, and for this one, he's alive without his father. 

We have a thankfully short set, as our first performance since.  A festival gig.  It's pouring rain in Ludinghausen, soaking the crowd, who dance wildly anyway.  There's something manic in all three of us today, and I know they can see it, hear it.  We're playing harder than we ever have together before.  We're playing as if to save our lives. 

It's wet and cold, even despite that burn.  Every time Rob sniffles, I hope he isn't holding back tears.  His face is a pale and conflicted mask when it meets mine.  He comes over to face me for a while during the first song, and I suspect from his expression that he's slipping and needs a moment turned away to compose.  I give him a grim smile of reassurance.  His lips and eyes tug at the corners, and he bores a hole into me with his gaze for a moment before looking down again and stepping away. 

Something about the way that man looks in pain... I'm suddenly burning inside, and pound the drums even harder, shaking my head to clear it.  But I can't stop watching him now.  His motions are fierce, angry.  Empty.  Empty and trying to fill back up.  So is his voice, when he sings.  Peter is watching him too, even more than he always does.  His eyes have the same haunted look they've had for days, sliding between studying Robert and staring off into the distance.  His voice is hoarse and harsh and pained.  He's lost someone important this week, too.  I wonder if he's cried. 

_I'm fighting just to breathe as I get back on my knees  
and say help me somebody; help me, somebody _

  

He's an angel for doing the bulk of the vocals today.  A black clad, stoic fucking angel. 

We play a very extended outro after _Whatever happened to our Rock'n'Roll_ , during which Rob jumps down off the stage and goes to the crowd.  I immerse myself in the rhythm and the violent momentum of the performance and ache as I watch him reaching out, trying to fill back up.  Eager hands caress his arms, his sides, his guitar.  He leans into them and rocks as he plays perched on the barricade.  For a moment I see him smile. 

But when our jam winds to a close, he staggers away, wiping rain from his brow with a dark sleeve, and folds down on himself in the mud.  When I stand and move from behind my kit, he's still curled over his guitar, strumming a few last lingering notes that seep in with the cold and haunt me. 

Peter watches him with vague brotherly concern a moment longer, then passes off his guitar and walks across stage and away.  _We'll see_ , his eyes say to me as he passes.  He lights another cigarette and departs. 

I hover just offstage.  I can't leave yet.  Can't leave him.  I can't make this anything less than the worst birthday of his life, nobody can, but I won't let him wander alone in his grief. 

He walks back very slowly, soaking wet, skin pale as packed snow.  He slows when he sees me, then speeds up, and his lips quirk sadly again, but he won't meet my eyes.  My heart has been breaking for three days at the sight of him.

I fall in beside him and put an arm around his waist.  He leans into it and bites his lip the way he does, eyes still fixed stoically on the muddy ground. 


	2. There's nothing left to disguise

I reach the landing of Rob's floor and emerge into the hallway, leather jacket over my arm and bottle of whiskey in hand.  We haven't been able to find him since the show, but I know he's here now.

"Fuck if I know," Peter replied when I asked where he was, ever-present cigarette glowing between his fingers.  "He declined my invitation to come out, when I asked him what he wanted to do tonight.  Then he stalked off.  His stuff isn't in our room."  He sighed.  "Don't know if we'll be able to sway him, or even find him, tonight, kid." 

I shook my head.  "It's his birthday.  This isn't right, him being sad _and_ alone."

All I got was a shrug.  "Dig him up, then.  He isn't answering me." 

"I'll try.  Meet up with you later."

Pete shrugged again, as if certain I'd turn up empty handed.  His grief is his own, Rob's grief is his own.

And so here I am outside his door, and suddenly I'm afraid he won't want my rescue attempt and will slam it in my face, but I have to try anyway. 

I knock.

"Robert, it's me."

Again.

"You don't have to hang out, but I wanted to bring you something.  It's your birthday, man."

It's silent for a moment.  Then the door opens and there he is.  Dark hair fluffed and deepened to black from a shower, color returned to his skin.  Eyes hollow and sad.  My heart catches.  He looks haggard.  Not necessarily like he's been crying, but... fucked up.  Definitely fucked up. 

He knows.  He smiles, bashfully, reassuringly.  "Hey, Leah." 

"Hey."

"I can't go out with you guys tonight, I just can't, it's too much, you know..? Don't exactly... feel like.. partying."

"That's okay.  I know.  Here, I brought the birthday party to you."  I hold the liquor out to him.

The smile is bigger this time.  "Ahh, Leah, Leah, this is why I love you."  He swings the door open all the way and steps aside for me.  "Come in, dude, have a drink with me." 

My shoulder brushes his as I walk into the room.  He claps my arm with a strong, calloused hand.  The storm clouds have receded from his eyes, the despair less prominent in his jaw and his brow.  "I wasn't trying to shut you out, you know.  I hope it didn't look that way when I took off."

I shake my head.  "Sometimes it's easier to be alone."

He sits down on the edge of the bed, leaving the chair for me.  I drape my jacket over it and join him.  He's finishing a deep swig from the bottle and passing it to me.  The whiskey burns pleasantly without a chaser, cauterizing some of the damage of the last few days. 

"I don't think being alone is even what I need, at all.  I just know that partying and pretending to be fine isn't."

"Birthday or no birthday," I wink.

"Birthday or no birthday."  He raises the bottle in cheers.

We drink in companionable silence for a few minutes, and a warm fuzz has settled into my nerves when he looks at his feet and softly says, "I've been feeling really fucked up these last few days."

I cross my ankles and lean back, brow furrowed and fingers meshed.  "Well, babe shadow, I'm here, all yours.  Talk to me." 

He just continues to take long pulls of whiskey for a while, frowning at the sting.  

"I don't even know what there is to say.  This is the closest death I've ever experienced," he says, swallowing thickly.  "And I'm not usually unsettled by this type of thing.  It... It hurts a lot more than I'd have expected it to." 

And now he is crying, face crumbling into sorrow, fingers pinching his brow and hiding his eyes as he gasps and sobs; his perfect eyes, his perfect face, God he's beautiful and endearing and sweet and it cuts me into pieces to see him so low. 

Muffled, slurred, tearful words escape the hand over his face.  "It isn't right.  It isn't right that I'm here and he's not."

I'm standing and going to him and throwing my arms around him before I even decide to do it.  He sighs into my chest, breath warming the skin exposed by my tank top as he rests his forehead against me.  Each breath is a shudder. 

I squeeze him tight and press my lips to his hairline.  He smells like soap and smoke and fresh grief.  And Rob.  Tears are filling my own eyes no matter how hard I fight them.  His hands have come up to clasp me to him, and suddenly they're bunching in my shirt, digging into my shoulder blades, in what I recognize as an entirely different kind of need.  His breathing has changed.  My heart races with first confusion and then understanding, and I feel the same need flare up in me.  I don't care about grief or fragility or consequences.  I drag a line of kisses down his temple, his cheek, his jaw.  My hands slide up into his hair, thumbs rubbing slow circles behind his ears.  His face rises to mine and what I see in his eyes freezes me in my tracks. 

He knocks me backwards rising to his feet before attacking my lips with his, kissing and sucking my skin as he drives me back into the desk next to the window and lifts me onto it.  I feel his teeth tugging at me and respond in kind with my own.  A first soft groan escapes him as I bite his bottom lip.  My legs curl instinctively around his hips.  He isn't hard yet, but I can feel him hot and pulsing against me, growing in response to my closeness. 

Sweet mercy, he's perfect.  How can _this_ be the first thing that brings us together this way?  I should have told him every day that I've seen him, what a kind and charismatic and rock'n'roll god among men he is.  But the band... the press, and the complications, and the social dynamics, and Peter... I couldn't risk...

He's got a hand pressed into the small of my back now, and his mouth is fused to my neck, and all cognitive thought flutters shut with my eyes.  I gasp as he nips at my collarbone and runs his tongue along the curve of it, pushing my hair out of his path.  I smell the liquor on his breath and my head spins.  The beginnings of chin stubble scrape gently against my skin.  I dig my fingertips into him, hoping they bruise. 

He pulls back for the first time and stares at me, eyes as deep and dark as the circles beneath them.  His pupils are blown with desire.  And, as much as I've secretly longed to see him fix me with that gaze, I know I'm seeing something real.  He trusts me.  He's hurting and he's breaking and he's desperately alone inside, desperate enough to choose feeling over thought, and he wants me.  Wants me to fix him, wants me to soothe him, wants me to save him, for however long I can. 

And I can do that. 

I pull my shirt over my head. 


	3. I keep chasing your ghost

Rob stares me up and down like a man who's gone so long without food that he can't quite believe the feast before his eyes enough to dig into it.  I meet his gaze, well past the point of modesty and fascinated by the sight of him like this. 

He steps closer, seemingly about to kiss me again, but I stop him with a foot on his thigh and lift his shirt upwards as well.  He raises his arms for me.  When his top joins mine in a dark puddle on the floor, he smirks at me, a perfect melancholy blend of sex and sadness and trepidation.  I pull him roughly back into my arms. 

His arms and shoulders look so gorgeous uncovered in the dim light.  His stomach is flat but not hard.  A dark fuzz of happy trail disappears beneath low-slung black jeans, identical to the ones he wore earlier but without the mud.  I've seen him partially undressed before, touring constantly and sharing a room for a while as we recorded the album, but never when it was okay to be openly looking.  And never when I was looking this openly.  My hands fumble with his button and fly as his tongue snakes into my mouth.  His hands slide slowly up my sides to my breasts. 

I don't know how I'll possibly survive this shit.  

We tug each other's pants down at the same time.  I have underwear on, he does not.  His dick is long and hard and _beautiful_ , but he catches my wrist as I reach for it.  "Don't you dare," he rasps, kissing my fingers as I struggle to contain a keening moan.  "I've waited far too long to touch you." 

Can he possibly be telling the truth?  Have we both been quietly yearning after... _oohhh._   His tongue swirls around my middle finger, then the center of my wrist, then licks a stripe to the crook of my elbow.  I'm tingling all over.  Moisture is soaking through my panties.  I'm all his, and he knows it.  His eyes burn like morbid candles.  He presses our pelvises together solidly and I can't help but cry out, feeling him for real for the first time.  We slide slowly against each other.  His breath intakes in a soft hiss.  I grip his arms.

With a yelp, I'm lifted off the table by calloused hands under my ass and flung onto the bed, where he covers my body with his.  I laugh into his mouth and he smiles as we kiss, melting me into an even sloppier writhing mess.  His fingers are gliding over me, tracing slow patterns that lead down between my legs.  His mouth closes over my left nipple.  This time I don't try to keep quiet. 

Rob lets out something between a whine and a snicker and moves more ambitiously, fueled by my enthusiasm.  He plants soft bites beneath the curves of my breasts, down my abdomen, over my hip bones.  His tongue dips into my belly button.  I'm a shivering mess beneath him. 

And then he's pulling my ankles to scoot me further down the bed, and gently flipping me over as my head spins, and pressing his face between my legs. 

He lays soft wet kisses on me first.  I gasp and moan and curse into the cheap hotel bed sheets.  I'm pushed face down, ass up, and I've never felt this vulnerable and raw and aroused in my life, and Robert fucking Been, my bandmate and closest friend and sexiest man I've ever seen, is licking the fucking life out of me as a reckless emotionally-charged respite from grieving for his dead father.  Seeking life as a sanctuary from death, plunging into the body to escape the grave.  His nose digs into the junction of my ass and thigh.  He swipes deep, steady stripes across me, varying in speed but always consistent in pattern.  I'm dizzy with pleasure.  I could come and come and come forever.

Before I do, though, he pulls away.  His rough, agile musician's fingers circle the folds his lips just left, and he plants a trail of kisses up my spine.  "It is an unforgivable shame," he grates in a voice graveled with desire, "that I have never told you before what a fucking perfect ass you have."  He slides one finger inside me to the hilt and crooks it, pulls it back out, rubs it over my wetness some more.  "I should have been telling you this entire time, that it's unbelievable, that _you're_ unbelievable." 

I twist in his arms to face him and rock my hips up to meet his fingers, two this time.  "I should have been telling _you_." 

" _Mmmmnnn_ , the way you look, drumming..."

"The way you look, playing bass!"

"It kills me not to watch you, on stage.  God, I hoped it was you I could feel looking at me.  Hundreds of eyes, and it's always the _back_ of my head that tingles..."

"Fuck me, Rob."

"You got it," he whispers next to my ear.  His face burrows into my neck, his body lowers to tangle with mine. 

I roll him over beneath me and kiss down his body to take him in my mouth.  He's warm and thick and his arousal smells delicious. I knew he would be big. Knew he would taste good. Knew he'd have the deepest sex lines I'd ever seen.  The sounds he's making and the way his mouth and brow furrow into some of the same shapes as when he's playing music make me moan as deeply as he does.  He moves to lace his fingers in my hair, but I'm already rising, straddling his lap and pressing him into me.  Slowly.  So slowly, oh, _god_ , Rob. 

He lets out a long, low hum when he's fully sheathed inside me, and clutches me to him.  His eyes are squeezed shut in pleasure and agony.  I kiss his shoulder and rock my hips gently against him, and he starts to thrust up into me faster and firmer with each stroke.  Soon he's on top of me again, limbs tangled with mine, bruising my hips with the grip of his relentless fingers, slamming against my cervix and bringing small gasping cries from my kiss-swollen lips.  The sharp, ravenous look in his sex-darkened eyes is the last thing I see before stars take my vision and I'm orgasming for what feels like minutes and minutes, harder each time. 

He growls above me.  "Christ, you're beautiful."  He pulls one of my legs up around his waist, reaches a hand to cup my face, fists it in my hair.  "Where do you want me to come?"

 _I have internal birth control, and you are one of my best friends in the world, motherfucker, you can come wherever you damn well please!_   "Don't you dare pull out, birthday boy," I say. 

Rob lowers his face to my shoulder and whines into it, and I catch the flash of that _fucking_ smile again.  His pace speeds up ruthlessly.  Our skin slaps together, leaving glistening sweat behind.  I'm wet and tingling and sore and in heaven.  He sighs my name.  A guttural groan escapes him.  His teeth clamp down hard on my collar bone, and that's it, I'm flying over the edge again, weightless and rolling on waves of pleasure that smell like him, look like him, sound like him.  His lasts thrusts are rigid and the whole length of his body shudders against mine.  His come tickles me hotly.  I shiver as I spiral back down to reality. 

Robert's right hand finds my left.  His lower body is still sprawled across me, his upper half sliding down into the pillows at my side.  He doesn't open his eyes, but he's smiling.  His breath comes in a shallow pant.  I squeeze his hand and swirl my other fingers over his naked torso. 

When his eyes raise to mine, they're flickering rapidly between wonder and relief.  Then they come to rest on seriousness.  He kisses my wrist, slow like the first time.  " _Thank you_ ," he murmurs. 

I grin.

He looks disheveled and exhausted, but from life and pleasure now, not from death. 

"Do you feel less awful?"

"Fuck, yes." 

"What do you want to do for the rest of the night, birthday boy?  Want to go out?"

"Fuck no.  Stay here with me?"

I shuffle closer and open my arms in answer, and he reaches over for the discarded bottle to take one more deep swallow before curling into me with a hand draped over my thighs and his head on my shoulder. 

  


End file.
